Analysis of sea-surface temperature in the Indian Ocean shows that warming correlates with east African rainfall; the effect on atmospheric convection and precipitation over the Indian Ocean is greater than that associated with El Niño (ENSO).

Direct measurement of an important indicator of interannual variability is extended, using geological proxy measures, farther back in time to well before modern measurements were made. This tells us about the history of climate variability.

Proxy methods allow us to estimate ancient ocean temperatures but only if the method is calibrated using modern samples for which we measure the temperature. This is a proxy method using a sediment trap to collect planktonic foraminifera.

Report on satellite imagery collected by the NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on NOAA polar-orbiting weather satellites. Links are provided to imagery of north-central Gulf of Mexico and of the Lake Pontchartrain.